Does your phone seem less functional than before? This may be due to enchitification
HECTOR RETAMAL/AFP via Getty Images
Enshittification
Cory Doctorow (MCD Books)
“Enshitification” is one of those rare new words that so accurately characterizes a prevailing but unnamed concept that it seems as if it has always existed, like “shrinkflation” or “greenwashing” before it.
We're all painfully familiar with how websites or apps get worse and worse over time as their owners squeeze profits out of users. You can see it everywhere, from Instagram abandoning a chronological stream of friends' photos for algorithmically compiled influencer bullshit to Apple discouraging easy repairs and forcing you to buy a new phone.
Cory Doctorow coined the term in 2022 and expanded on it in his latest book: Enshittification: Why everything suddenly became worse and what to do about itwhich is also a call to action.
The enchitification scheme is that a platform like Facebook is installed and offers a good service. It's useful and fun, and people flock to it. The company then waits until we don't rely on it – our friends, local groups, swimming clubs and schools are all there – and it's simply too much trouble to leave.
By this point, the user base is so large that advertisers are also blocked. It is then that the company begins to prioritize profit, making the service worse for users: more advertising, more algorithms. Finally, he is squeezing his advertisers. The platform is now terrible and toxic, does not work for anyone except shareholders, and it is impossible to leave it. According to Doctorow, we are trapped in rotting corpses.
A few years ago, the market would have killed a bad company. If a cafe started serving bad coffee, we would buy another coffee. But now tech companies are creating monopolies so profitable that they have enormous resources to maintain them: they buy competitors only to shut them down, lobby politicians to ease regulation and pay for exclusive deals. (Did you know that Google pays Apple $20 billion a year to become the default search engine in Apple's Safari browser?)
Enshittification exposes the industry's open secrets, such as companies that allegedly collect so much personal data that they know they charge more for things on payday because we're less likely to nitpick. Or those that use algorithms to suppress wages in the gig economy or create keystroke monitoring systems that alert managers if we stop typing.
These unpleasant passages will not be new to readers, but if eaten in large quantities, they will leave a bad taste in the mouth. They will even make savvy people curse themselves for the many and varied ways in which they are misled.
Yes, the trick is that companies simply do what they are designed to do: make as much profit as possible. But computers, algorithms and the Internet have made it possible to use increasingly sophisticated and complex methods that would not have been possible even ten years ago, and the situation has spiraled out of control.
Doctorow warns that the regulators who are supposed to protect us are often weaker than the companies they control. But he also has great faith in them being the solution.
There have been positive developments in the European Union and the United States under President Joe Biden, although there is still much to be done and tech companies may come up with ways to destroy us faster than they can be stopped. We can demand more from our politicians, and well-designed legislation backed by toothy regulators can have some effect.
What is not addressed, however, is the power of the boycott and the fact that tech firms need us more than we need them. It's entirely possible to give up social media, shop locally, and use ethical search engines. And the more people do this, the more likely it is that others will follow suit.
When it comes to travel, clothing or food, many of us try to vote with our wallets. Perhaps it's time more of us do the same in the online world.
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